Lupe Fiasco - Lasers

Lupe Fiasco's third album finally gets a release after two years in major-label limbo, which came to a head last summer when fans started a petition and protested outside Atlantic's headquarters.

Oddly, Lasers is Fiasco's most commercial-sounding album - but think of it as club music with a conscience. The Chicago wordsmith wraps his skilful flow and incendiary rhymes about politics, social strife and race relations around feel-good club beats and massive, singalong choruses. In doing so, he effectively erases the invisible line that separates brain from booty.

Occasionally the production is anything but subtle: hook singer Skylar Grey's Rihanna-esque vocal turn on Words I Never Say; the trancey synths on Break The Chain. But when a lyric like "Limbaugh is racist / Glenn Beck is racist / Gaza Strip was gettin' bombed / Obama didn't say shit" leaps from a thundering bass line, you listen.